


Living

by atlanticslide



Series: Just Keep Breathing [3]
Category: Hollyoaks
Genre: Background Het, Getting Back Together, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlanticslide/pseuds/atlanticslide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He spends a year trying to forget John Paul.  It all feels very familiar.</p><p>Except that this time, there’s years of their life together, intertwined and on display throughout the flat - <i>Craig’s</i> flat now – that he has to untangle.</p><p>It’s harder than he pretends to everyone else that it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/gifts).



> So, this picks up just after the New Year, 2013 and assumes some knowledge of events on Hollyoaks through about mid-November 2013, but you should be able to read it even if you're not caught up. Unfortunately, things are happening on the show that go totally against the story here, so I hope you're able to ignore them. If you can, let's just pretend that nothing after Joe and Lindsey's wedding has happened, okay? :) I hate doing that, but it's the trouble with writing for ongoing canons sometimes.

He spends a year trying to forget John Paul. It all feels very familiar.

Except that this time, there’s years of their life together, intertwined and on display througout the flat - _Craig’s_ flat now – that he has to untangle.

It’s harder than he pretends to everyone else that it is.

-

There’s a frantic phonecall from his mum early in January, which means John Paul’s in Hollyoaks then.

“Why didn’t you tell me, love?” she asks him, and he doesn’t really have an answer.

“I dunno,” he sighs as he slouches down onto the couch. _His_ couch, everything in the flat is his alone now. He stares at the clock on the table in front of him, the one shaped like a football that John Paul insisted on buying because he thought it was funny and wouldn’t ever let Craig move to somewhere less conspicuous. 

“I met baby Matthew,” she says, which makes Craig’s heart just about stop. “He’s lovely Craig. You should see him, you really should.”

“Baby Matthew?” he hears himself babble out.

“You didn’t know John Paul’d named him?”

“I didn’t even know he’d kept him.”

“Well of course he did, Craig, what else was he supposed to do with a baby?”

-

He spends weeks going through everything in the flat, meticulously separating DVDs and X-Box games, picking out the ones he’s sure belong to John Paul even though nothing has really belonged to either one of them alone since they moved in here. He boxes up all of John Paul’s clothes and books and discs, his favorite mugs and the stupid football clock and the picture frame he made while they were on holiday last winter and the ugly vase he bought on impulse at a gift shop in Galway because he saw Craig looking at it and the little leprechaun magnet he’d stuck on the refrigerator a couple of years ago on St. Patrick’s Day.

It’s easy enough to go through everything, gives him something to do and to focus on other than the pain still burning in his chest, but when he’s packed it all up the flat feels cold and empty, like it’s missing something vital.

He pulls the box down from the shelf in the bedroom closet where it’d been moved when they first moved in. It’s the box with Kieron’s things, and the vicious, angry part of Craig wants to just dump it in the rubbish bin, but as soon as he picks it up intending to do just that, he thinks of how badly it would hurt John Paul, and he can’t quite do it, even if he wants to toss the rest of John Paul’s things out into the street.

After taking the Kieron box to the post office, he does just that, dragging the boxes and bags of John Paul’s things out the rubbish bins in front of the building and shoving them unceremoniously inside. One of the bags won’t fit, and Craig finds himself punching and punching it to get it down inside, grunting angrily with the effort.

That’s how Jess finds him when she comes walking up the street, pausing when their eyes meet and she sees what he’s doing.

“You sure you want to be doing that?” she asks as she comes over, clutching at the bag over her shoulder and tapping her fingers against the strap.

“Why should I keep any of it?” Craig asks bitterly, giving the bin a swift kick. “He’s gone and he’s not coming back. If he’d wanted any of this shit he would’ve taken it with him.”

“You might want it, though,” she tells him softly, looking down at the bag crushed inside of the bin. There’s on old shirt of John Paul’s, light blue and striped and ugly and Craig’s always hated that shirt. He wishes he could just burn it like he’s always wanted to, even though it brought out the color in John Paul’s eyes so nicely.

“Why would I want any of this?” Craig says, turning away from the bins to walk back inside. “It’s junk, it’s _his_ junk, and I don’t want it in _my_ flat any longer.”

“You might change your mind later, though,” Jess replies, following him into the flat.

“I won’t, and if you’ve just come here to lecture, I’m not in the mood.” He goes to the refrigerator to pull out a beer. “If you’d like to help, though, you can help me box things up. There’s a load of baby stuff that needs returning to stores.”

-

He wakes in a panic in the middle of that night, unable to feel John Paul next to him or hear his breathing, unable even to smell him in their bed (his bed) anymore because he’d washed the all of the bedding that afternoon.

Out on the street before he realizes it, he finds himself dashing for the bins and breathing out a sigh when he finds the rubbish hasn’t been picked up yet. He digs through all of it, throwing clothes and DVDs this way and that until he finds the ugly vase from Galway and brings it back inside with him.

-

He goes out with mates and drinks a lot, more even than he knows he should be. He works late and shouts at the office secretary and then apologizes to her sheepishly a few days later.

He lets Jess ramble at him about the new bloke she’s got because he’s told her about a million times that he doesn’t want to talk to John Paul.

He avoids Chloe like the plague. He ignores every phonecall and text from John Paul until they eventually fizzle out. It guts him when he realizes that he hasn’t ignored any messages in weeks – they’ve simply stopped coming.

-

He finds an old mug of John Paul’s in the back of the cupboard. It’s got reindeer on it and John Paul’s name written in glittered paint. Craig had had it made up for him a few Christmases ago to put in his stocking, and John Paul had laughed at it and threatened to chuck it at Craig’s head when he saw it. He only ever drinks out of it in December.

Craig throws it hard as he can at a wall and watches it smash into a dozen pieces with no satisfaction at all. Freddy finds the mess when he’s over a few days later and looks from the scattered pieces littering the floor, John Paul’s name just barely still legible, to Craig, and Craig shrugs in response, says, “Dropped it,” and lets Freddy clean the mess up for him.

-

He goes to Ibiza, the trip they’d been planning together, and ends up drunk on the beach one night with his hand down some guy’s pants, just to see what it’s like with another man who’s not John Paul. He waits for those breathy groans John Paul always goes for, but they never come, and finds hair in spots that John Paul has none and when he comes, the other man closes his eyes and tips his head back and locks up in a way that John Paul never did, or does, or something, it’s all jumbled up in Craig’s head and he walks away after, still hard, to find an empty, secluded spot where he can get a hand on his cock himself and pull on it roughly and think of John Paul looking up at him with Craig’s cock in his mouth and how his mouth would drop open when Craig fucked him, that first stroke in, and how he always kept his eyes open and stared right at Craig as he came, every time, looking at Craig like Craig was something amazing.

He spends the rest of the trip shagging girls, burying himself in curves and breasts and warmth that feels totally different than anything he’s had in the last few years.

-

There’s a girl, Maria, he meets at a pub one night when he’s back in Dublin. She’s Spanish, living here for a couple of years while she studies, and she smiles at Craig when he chats her up, which feels pretty good. He hasn’t had someone smile and laugh at his jokes in a while, and he likes the way she tucks her hair back behind her ear as she talks.

-

He speaks to John Paul for the first time in months, settling their last arrangements for the baby, and it’s daggers in his chest the whole time. John Paul sounds different, and so does Craig’s voice to his own ears. He can’t quite remember what they used to be like anymore. It’s like talking to a stranger.

“I won’t, you know. Challenge you. For custody or something,” Craig stutters out hesitantly. “I meant it when I said I didn’t want anything to do with him.” He did, really, and he meant it when he said that if John Paul wanted the baby he’d have to raise it without Craig.

“Good,” John Paul replies, and it’s hard to tell over the phone whether he’s bitter or angry or just trying to sound confident, but it annoys Craig. He’s not sure what he was expecting – maybe for John Paul to beg him again, to apologize and say that he can’t live without Craig, so Craig can say that _he’s_ doing just fine, better than fine, really.

After they’ve hung up without goodbyes and Craig is feeling suddenly bereft, he wonders what he’d have said if John Paul did ask for Craig to take him back. He falls asleep later that night with the thought still prickling the back of his mind, that he might’ve said yes.

 _Probably would’ve said yes in a heartbeat_ , he thinks as he sinks into sleep, and he has nightmares that night of he and John Paul on boats stranded in the sea and drifting away from each other forever.

-

They’ve been dating for a couple of months, he and Maria, when Craig runs into Chloe on Grafton street. She’s pregnant again, which is random, and she’s staring into a shop window when she turns and spots him.

He’s expecting her to dash away, or come storming over and slap him, maybe, because she’s always been a bit of a nutter and because they did something horrible to her.

But her eyes just go wide and she waves when he smiles nervously at her and then picks her way through the crowds to come over to him, hugging him when she gets close enough. It’s all rather strange.

“The baby’s gettin’ big,” she tells him over tea, and his fingers grip the cup so hard he’s sure it’ll crack any second. “You should see him.”

“I don’t want to,” he says, staring hard at his tea. “He’s John Paul’s, not mine.”

“He could be yours,” she says quietly. She’s trying to push him and it won’t work.

“No,” Craig insists. “Doesn’t matter whose he is biologically. John Paul is his father.”

“Are you sure you won’t regret this someday?” she asks, and he’s losing his patience.

“I’m dating someone,” he blurts out. “A girl. Maria. She’s fit and she’s nice and she doesn’t nag me or push me for anything I’m not ready for – that I don’t want.”

“Okay,” Chloe replies with a light tone that just pisses Craig off further.

“I’ve got a whole new life. And he’s got his baby and his life back in Hollyoaks and I don’t need any of it. I don’t _want_ any of it.”

“Okay,” Chloe says again. She doesn’t believe him, he can tell, but he doesn’t care.

“I _don’t_. You can tell him that, too. I don’t need him.”

“Craig,” Chloe says gently, covering one of his hands, still clenched on his cup, with her own. “It’s okay.”

His jaw trembles, but it’s just the tension, just anger really, nothing more; he’s still angry with John Paul for everything they did and everything they said, and he only wishes John Paul were here in front of him right now so that Craig could yell and shout at him. And it’s just politeness when he releases the cup with the hand she’s covering and grasps her fingers in return.

-

The flat never warms up, even as the winter months end and the temperature outside goes up. It never stops feeling empty, no matter what Craig does to it. He thinks about asking Maria to move in with him, but the words choke in his throat before he can get them out. And anyway, she has a good setup already with a flatmate she likes, and Craig likes having the space, really. He does. He just wishes sometimes that it weren’t so cold and didn’t feel so hollow. 

He wishes he didn’t still look for traces of John Paul in every room.

-

Chloe flits in and out of town at random, bringing news occasionally of John Paul, that he’s got a new boyfriend, and then another new boyfriend, and he seems good, seems okay, was pleased to hear about how Craig’s getting on.

“He misses you, though,” she tells him as they stroll through the park one day in the summertime, when Craig still sort of feels like it’s January because it can’t be that they’ve been apart for more than half a year already.

“‘Course he does,” Craig replies automatically, hoping he doesn’t sound bitter.

“Aaaaaaand…” she says, drawing it out like she’s waiting for something. “D’you miss him too?”

“Chloe,” Craig sighs, shoving his hands into his pockets. He kicks at a couple of rocks on the path in front of them.

“I think you do,” she declares with a smile that Craig can’t figure out.

“Leave it, Chloe,” he tells her. “I’m serious. I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Can’t even say his name, ay?” She laughs lightly but he’s got no idea what’s so funny. “Sounds like love to me.”

“ _Stop_.”

“Fine, fine,” she says, putting up her hands defensively, but still with that odd smile. “So tell me about that girl of yours then, what’s she been up to?”

-

He breaks up with Maria sometime in the fall, though he hasn’t been paying much attention to the date since last winter, so he’s no idea how long it was, exactly, that their relationship lasted.

It’s possible she broke up with him. He’s not quite sure of that either. Just that he’s been feeling restless and wrong and like something's been missing for ages and one day they’re together having a meal and he's uncomfortable and she looks annoyed and then the next day they’re over.

“It’s not working out,” he’s pretty sure he said to her, and “You’re not all here,” she said to him, “You’re not over them.”

“Who?” he’d asked, and she shrugged and waved a hand around and said, “Whoever. Them. Her. The person before me.”

And he’d scoffed and shook his head and said, “No, no, it’s just that there’s something missing between us. It’s not right.”

And maybe they talked some more, but if he’s honest, Craig doesn’t even really care all that much. It’s over, time to move on again.

-

He goes out on the pull here and there, meets girls and takes them home, and nothing ever feels right.

-

One afternoon when he’s walking by Ha’Penny bridge, he notices some men with tools scattered across the bridge doing some work, and it takes him a few moments to realize what they’re doing.

They’re taking the love locks from the bridge.

“Wait, wait,” he nearly shouts as he dashes up onto the bridge, searches for the spot where his and John Paul’s lock has been for years, but he’s too late, apparently, and the men stare at him as he drops his hands to his sides, defeated.

Their lock is gone.

-

It’s autumn now, and he’s still working too much, still drinking too much. Jess is spending more time with her boyfriend and Freddy goes home early most evenings and James isn’t much fun on his own without the others. Craig is out of sorts but he can’t put his finger on why. The ache in his chest has never eased and he can’t figure out what to do with himself.

-

He dates another girl, Allie, but it barely lasts a couple of weeks.

“Was it a long relationship?” she asks him one night as they’re picking over their food and he’s plowing quickly through a bottle of wine because he can’t think of much to say.

“What relationship?” he looks up at her, confused.

“The one before me,” she replies, folding her napkin up to put it on the table next to her plate.

“What? No, just a few months.”

“Before that one then. It’s just, it seems like you’re still hung up on someone else.”

“No, ‘course I’m not,” he laughs, shaking his head. “What would make you think that?”

She shrugs. She’s beautiful, lighter hair than Maria but darker eyes, and Craig loves being in bed with her, but when it comes to talking he doesn’t ever really feel like he’s got much to say.

“Intuition, I guess,” she replies, taking a sip of wine. “And the lack of any photos on your walls or around your flat, the empty spaces around where it looks like you’ve moved someone out recently.”

He takes a quick look around, because she must be mistaken, but he realizes quite suddenly that she’s right – he’s never replaced any of the photos that he tossed out months ago, leaving gaps on shelves and spaces on the walls in between posters where they used to be. He can see past the open hallway closet door how he still keeps his coats to one side, leaving space on the other side. He’s never noticed it before now, how in all the time that he thought he was replacing John Paul from the apartment he’d just been leaving gaps here and there.

“I… no, not recently, just – I guess I just haven’t gotten round to really redecorating yet…”

He’d thought he had. He moved the furniture around, pushed the couch over to the front window and moved the TV across the room and stacked his DVDs in a bookcase empty of John Paul’s books and bought a new bed set and flipped the mattress over and turned it on its end and everything should be different, he’s been waiting for it all to feel like the new flat he’d been trying for, but… But.

“I just don’t think you’ve quite moved past it yet,” Allie says, taking another sip of her wine and drumming her fingers against the tabletop. 

“I have, though,” Craig tries to reassure. “It was months ago, ages, and he’s long gone – ”

He hadn’t meant to say that. He’s never tried to hide his relationship with John Paul from his friends or the people he knows, but he’s never really made a point to tell anyone he meets now that the person who may just have been the great love of his life was a bloke. He’s certainly never let it slip to a woman he’s dating.

Her eyebrows raise at that, and then she stoops down to gather her bag.

“Wait, don’t go,” he tells her, leaping from his chair when she rises from hers. “It was – okay, I was with a man, we lived together and we – we were in love, but I’m straight. Mostly.”

“It’s not that, Craig,” she says as she moves around him to gather her coat. “I don’t care about that. It’s that I don’t think you’re over him.

“I am, though,” he pleads, shaking his head quickly. “And he’s gone now anyway, he’s long moved out. And I’m over him.”

“Then you don’t really like me very much, do you?”

“What? Of course I do. We have fun together, don’t we?”

“Sure, we’ve had a laugh now and then,” she says, and tugs on the strap of her bag. “But it’s like you’re somewhere else half the time, or like you’d rather _be_ somewhere else far away.”

He sort of wants to right now, just run and run and…

And then Allie’s gone and Craig’s left alone again in his cold, empty flat.

-

“Where are you off to then?” Jess asks as Craig packs up a rucksack.

He shrugs without looking up from the stack of pants he’s shoving into the bag.

“Not sure yet. Thought I’d just take the ferry across to Liverpool, have a wander.”

“Is everything alright?” she asks, sounding concerned. 

She won’t believe anything he tells her, but he tries anyway, saying, “Of course. Just need to get away for a bit.”

He leaves her behind in his flat, lets her close it up for him and heads off to get a ferry without looking back.

-

He’s in Liverpool and bored, gets a bus over to Manchester just for someplace to go, not really sure where he wants to end up. After a couple of days in Manchester he heads down to Nothwich, and then Whitchurch from there, which has nothing going on, and then over to Wrexham, but he’s not really one for Wales, so he only spends a day before he gets on another bus from there without paying much attention to where it’s headed. He doesn’t care much.

He doesn’t even realize where he’s been circling around until he hears the stop called for Hollyoaks and his stomach drops.

-

The first time he sets foot in Hollyoaks in about five years feels not much different from the last time he was there. There’s a flower shop where MOBS used to be, and Tony’s restaurant seems to be gone, which makes his heart sink a bit as he looks at the gym that’s there now and thinks of his first date with Sarah.

The Dog looks about the same, though, at least from the outside, and he gets a rush of warm familiarity at the sight of it, though he has no idea what to make of the huge boat in the pond, even though he’s heard about it before.

“Craig!” his mum exclaims when she sees him and rushes over to grab him. He feels a bit guilty, suddenly, when he thinks about how long it’s been since he’s seen her, and longer still since he’s been back here.

“What’re you doing here, I had no idea you were coming!” she gushes, and he shrugs awkwardly, trying to pull from her embrace. He misses Steph suddenly and desperately, acutely in a way he hasn’t quite felt since she died, now that he’s back home and without anyone to commiserate with over their mental family, and realizing that his mom’s been missing all of her children.

“Just thought I’d surprise you,” he tells her, smiling, and she hugs him again. “No big secrets this time though, right? No one you’re secretly hiding up in the attic, not faking anyone else’s death.”

She bursts out a laugh at that, which is good because she could just as well have smacked him for it.

“Oh, it’s so good to have you home, love,” she tells him, still smiling and holding on to him.

He meets Ruby and Esther for the first time, officially, and he’s struck by how much Esther looks like Steph. Charlie has grown, is speaking now, and Darren and Nancy have their baby, and it’s sort of amazing how much he’s missed here, even as they all give half a mind to fretting over Tom. It’s like he’d expected, somehow, that time in Hollyoaks would have stopped when he left, and that everything and everyone would be just as they were anytime he returned.

“I have to go and meet Jack – oh, he’s going to be so thrilled to see you! – but you just stay right here, don’t go anywhere.”

With another kiss to his cheek, she dashes off out the door. He smiles after her, feeling calmer now than he has in months, despite his mother near manic tendencies. Sienna – Darren’s girlfriend, he’s heard, which is weirder now that he’s met her – pours him a pint and he can’t deny that it tastes better than anything he can get back in Dublin, maybe only for the fact that it’s his home and his family’s pub that’s pouring it for him here.

“So, you’re Craig?” she asks him, smiling a bit. “The other step-brother.”

“That’s me,” he replies brightly, raising his glass to her and grinning.

She grins back, but it falters quickly when she glances up at the pub’s door opening. Craig turns to see who she’s looking at, and finds Nancy standing in the doorway, cocking her head at him. 

She’s far less enthusiastic to see him than any of the others.

“So, you’ve finally come back then, have you?” she says, that snooty tone of hers, and she comes up to take a seat at the bar beside him. 

“Looks that way, don’t it?” he shoots back, just as irritated. He’s always found her rather annoying and she clearly hasn’t gotten any less self-righteous with age.

“Well, I can tell you right now, if you’re expecting him to just take you right back, you can _forget_ it,” she tells him, and he nearly chokes on his beer.

Sienna gravitates over at that with an expression of interest on her face. “Another man, you mean. Who’s that, then?”

Craig’s stomach is churning and he’s about to take his pint and run for the farthest table, or better yet just go up to the flat, but Nancy cuts off any response he can form.

“I beg your pardon,” she says pointedly at Sienna, giving her a dagger-filled look. That’s something he’s always respected about Nancy, at least. She’s never been one to back down. “Were we speaking to you? No, I don’t believe we were, so please mind your own business, thank you.”

She turns back to him as Sienna, looking wounded, turns and walks slowly towards the other end of the bar.

“You can’t expect this to just be like the last time, Craig, that you’ll just be able to say a few words and he’ll be back in your arms after a year apart, and it’s really quite selfish of you to expect he’d even want to see you after all this time.”

“Nancy,” he starts, but she barrels on.

“Too much time has passed,” she tells him, shaking her head decidedly. She’s got a finger waggling now too, and he rolls his eyes at her. “Too much has changed. His life is totally different now, he’s got a _child_ – ”

“Nancy – ”

“A child you ran out on, I might add.”

“Nancy, stop – ”

“And he doesn’t deserve to keep being yanked around by the likes of you.” Her whole hand is open now, waving in his face. It’s annoying.

“I’m not here for him,” he manages to get out. She doesn’t seem to hear him.

“Frankly, I don’t know what he ever saw in you anyway – either of them, really, because I never did see why Sarah was so hung up on you – but he did love you, and he doesn’t deserve to be treated that way by someone he loves.”

“Nancy,” he cuts in sharply, forcing her to pause and really look at him. “I’m not here looking to get back together with him. It’s over, it’s been over, and what makes you think I did anything to him anyway? He was the one who pushed and pushed me and then left.”

“You’re not?” she asks, looking for the first time like she’s concerned for him, sort of.

“I’m just staying a few days, probably. Won’t have much time for catching up with every random villager.” He looks down at his beer and feels suddenly awful, like an awful person for saying such a thing.

Nancy doesn’t let it pass. “He’s not just some random villager. Of course you have to see him.”

Craig looks up at her dumbly. “A minute ago you were forbidding me from talking to him!”

“That was when I thought you were here to do the sensible thing and trying to get him back.” She folds her arms across her chest and raises her eyebrows at him.

“I just – I was just traveling, I happened to be in the area, and – ”

“Craig, you live in Ireland, that’s not exactly ‘in the area.’”

“I just said I was traveling,” he snaps at her, and her eyes narrow in response. “And I haven’t seen my mum or Jack in a while, so. I thought I’d come for a visit, I guess.”

“Oh, _please_ ,” she says with an exaggerated eyeroll, and reaches for his pint to take a long sip before he can stop her.

“What d’you mean ‘oh please’?”

“Of course you came back to see him!” 

He shakes his head and gulps down a long swallow of beer, hoping for something to numb the worry growing in his stomach.

“Stop saying that, I did not. I’m just visiting, it’s not like Dublin’s _that_ far away.” He leaves out the past few days he’s spent circling around through other towns.

“Craig, you haven’t been back here in _years_. You didn’t come back here when you your ex-fiancé was killed, you didn’t come back when you found out you had a long lost niece, you didn’t come back here for your brother’s wedding – ” 

“Darren’s _not_ my brother.” 

“ – You didn’t even come back here for your own sister’s funeral.” She’s ticking things off on her fingers and that one, in particular, hits him, makes him duck his head out of her gaze. “And you expect me to believe that you came back just because you felt like it one day?”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, really. He’s struck, and feeling defensive, but he can’t seem to get out _piss off, it’s none of your business_ before she goes on, more quietly now.

“Why are you really here, Craig?”

“Not to see John Paul,” he says reflexively, and then freezes with that familiar ache again in his chest. 

It’s the first time he’s said John Paul’s name in months. In as long as he can remember.

“I know what I said before,” she begins carefully, still looking him full on in the face. It’s a bit disarming. “But it is okay if you want to see him, you know.”

“I can’t,” he confesses quietly, shaking his head.

“Why not?”

“Well how can I? He left me. He _left_ me.”

“From what he’s told me, you left him first,” she says evenly, making him bristle and wonder what else John Paul told her about their relationship and its end.

“Because he wasn’t strong enough to do it himself,” he replies, falling back in time to a year ago, which suddenly doesn’t feel so long ago. “And I came back, but he was gone.”

“You were gone first,” she points out, and she’s right, but he doesn’t want to hear it. It was the right thing to do, to leave. It had to be. _Maybe_ , he thinks, a stray bit of supposition flitting through his mind. _Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe if I hadn’t left there’d have been a chance…_

But it’s pointless to think about. He hasn’t let himself dwell on _what if_ s this whole year, and it’s worked out for him so far, so why start wondering and worrying now? What’s done is done.

“You have to at least talk to him,” she says, gentle now, like she’s trying to guide him carefully towards what she thinks is best. “At least for a moment. You owe it to yourselves, to each other. And maybe – ”

“No,” he tells her, trying to sound firm. “There’s no ‘maybe.’” 

_Maybe if I’d come back sooner…_

She gives him a long, pensive look. “Tell me you don’t still want to be with him. And _don’t_ lie!” She points that accusing finger in his face again, and he knocks her hand away, looks down at his beer again.

“I don’t…” he pauses and considers, tries to think seriously about what it is he wants. And also tries to keep in mind that Nancy is John Paul’s closest friend, so perhaps he should be careful of what he says to her. “I don’t want to keep fighting with him. I don’t want to keep rowing over… _stupid_ things. Not the baby, I mean, just, just everything else – jealousies and jobs and where to go on holiday and whether I still look at women on occasion.”

“Those are kind of normal things to fight about on occasion,” she tells him, and it’s rather surprising how calm she is with him all of a sudden.

“On occasion,” he agrees, then shakes his head. “But this was more than just a one-off now and then. And I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Neither could he,” she tells him, but Craig knows that already. “That’s why he wanted the baby.”

“Such a monumentally _stupid_ idea,” he sighs.

“Maybe. But he’s here now, so I’d say you have two choices.” She takes another sip from his beer and he doesn’t even have it in him to be annoyed. “You can keep on hiding from each other and live the rest of your lives in misery, apart from one another, or you can go and see him and _talk_ to him and work out how to live your lives together. In misery, maybe, because frankly, Craig, I just don’t think you’re a particularly happy person.”

He ignores that last bit of sarcasm and stares down at his hands, considering his next words carefully. He can feel them clawing at him to escape, but he’s… well, he’s really just too scared to let them all out. He hasn’t even let himself think any of it in a year. Back all those years ago, when he’d first gone to Dublin and left John Paul behind, he thought for months about how badly he wanted John Paul back, went over and over in his mind what he’d say. This time around he’s kept it all locked away somewhere in the back of his mind, afraid to even hope that he might get the chance again to make things right.

“Even if that was true – not that I’m saying it, just… hypothetically.” He speaks slowly, tripping over the words even so, but Nancy stays quiet and lets him speak. “Even if it were true, what can I do? We’ve done this so many times, me and John Paul, this back and forth, pushing and pulling. We’ve walked away from each other more times than I can count. What more can we do?”

He shakes his head, but even as he does it, it hits him – they run and they push and they break apart from each other, over and over, but they’ve always come back together. They’ve never been able to live without each other, not since they first met.

Waves crashing against rocks.

“You can figure it out,” Nancy tells him quite seriously. He looks up at her, looks her in the eye, and she stares hard at him right back.

He shakes his head, not really disagreeing, but unsure what else to say or how to really respond to that.

“I’ve got to get out of here for a bit,” he declares, pushing away from the bar.

“You’re not running away again, are you?” Nancy asks dubiously. He’s not sure how serious he is, but he turns a withering look on her all the same.

“ _No_ ,” he sneers at her, and she just cocks her head back and lets out a quick laugh. He rolls his eyes in response and grabs his coat.

He wanders out into the village, taking stock again of the differences from the last time he was back here – change of name to The Loft, a new deli across from it, Laund-O-Rama gone – and trying not to think of the conversation he’s just had that’s left him feeling drained and raw, like he’s just gone through the breakup all over again.

And that, of course, is when Craig sees him.

John Paul is standing there, frozen, staring back at him, not ten feet away. He’s got a pram in front of him.

They both gape. Craig can feel it, can feel his jaw drop down to about his shoes and his eyes go just as wide as John Paul’s. 

His heart may have stopped. He can’t quite feel it.

John Paul closes his mouth and then opens it again, looks like he might be about to say something, and that’s when Craig turns right around and near on runs in the opposite direction.

-

He’s always been good at running away.

He stops only when he gets to the edge of the woods and trips over a tree root.

“Fuck,” he says to himself, quietly at first, and then, “FUCK!” and bangs one fist against the ground. He probably looks like a small child throwing a tantrum and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even know what he’s yelling about.

He throws himself onto his back and lays one arm over his eyes with a heavy sigh.

All he can really think is that he really does want so badly to hear John Paul’s voice again and touch him and just be able to look at him.

Nancy’s words do battle with his own in his head.

_You can figure it out._

_What more can we do?_

_You can work it out._

_I don’t want to keep fighting._

_Work out how to live your lives together…_

As if it’s that simple. As if they weren’t really trying to before.

He sighs and lets his arm fall down against his chest, stares up at the gray sky through the bare tree branches above him.

_We always come back together…_

A year’s worth of work getting over him, carefully removing John Paul from every part of his life, all unraveled in a moment.

-

He spends the evening helping his mum hang posters for Tom around nearby villages, happy for the excuse to escape Hollyoaks for a bit, and lets her chatter on about Esther and Ruby and how nice it is that they’re back to being so close, and about Sienna and how Mum just doesn’t really like her particularly but Darren’s infatuated with her (she says, with a flourish of her hands), so they’ve had to let it go even though, for all that Mum bickered with her, she’ll always think of Nancy as family.

Craig nods as she goes on, puts everything else out of his mind and focus on _Esther, right, Ruby, Nancy, Sienna, baby on the way, Darren’s an idiot, what else is new, Nancy seems past her troubles, want to find Tom and bring him home, not sure what else to do but focus on the good things as they continue to search and hold out hope for him_ and on and on. 

She slows her pace, in speaking and in walking, when they’ve neared the end of the their stack of posters, and turns to look at him.

“Craig,” she begins carefully, and he knows exactly where she’s headed.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” he tells her quickly. He’s gotten enough to think about from Nancy already, he doesn’t need to add his mother into the mix.

“If you _do_ want to talk about it though – ”

“I don’t.” He picks up his pace, walking fast enough to pull away from her.

“But if you do, you know, we can.”

“Mum,” he groans, thinking about tossing the rest of the posters into the air.

“Stop a moment, love,” she tells him, her voice full and firm. He does. Sometimes it’s hard to say no to her.

She catches up and comes around to face him.

She tells him gently, “I just don’t want you to go through your life and realize somewhere down the road that you’ve made a mistake.”

“You mean the baby or John Paul?”

“Both. Either.” She grasps both of his arms and holds onto him firmly. “Look, it’s perfectly understandable that you might not want to have a baby. Not everyone has to be a parent. Or that you don’t want to do it now. But things happen sometimes, mistakes happen, and sometimes you have to go along with it. You don’t always get to choose when you take the next step in your life.”

“I’m not really sure that’s any reason to be a parent, though,” he argues weakly, feeling wrecked at having to talk about this when he’s still not certain of his own feelings. “Especially when the kid’s got a perfectly fine family already.”

“Well, I’m not even going to touch on the McQueens being considered a perfectly fine family.”

“Mum,” he says, near whining.

“But if you want to be with him, then you’ll have to make a decision.”

“How do you know I still want to be with him?” he asks, going for aloof but probably just sounded defensive.

“Oh Craig, love,” she says, moving a hand up to cup his cheek. “I know why you came back here, even if you don’t.”

And the truth is, he does know it now. He just doesn’t know what to do with the realization that maybe he can’t live without John Paul after all.

-

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, really, but Nancy makes it so easy sometimes with how loudly she can speak sometimes, and when, the next morning after his arrival, Craig finds himself sitting at a table at that new coffee shop and hears Nancy’s voice drifting over from around the corner, he doesn’t bother trying not to listen.

“It never hurt anyone to try.”

“Actually, I think it hurts loads,” John Paul’s voice replies, and Craig has to shut his eyes. It’s too familiar, too good to hear it after so long, better than he’d sounded that time they spoke on the phone a few months ago. It actually sounds like John Paul this time, that hint of cockiness and sarcasm and warmth and it makes Craig’s heart beat faster like he’s a damn schoolgirl. 

“You ever been through a breakup?” he continues on, sounding rather teasing. “Tried and tried to make things work only to have it all go to rubbish? I’m sure you know how much that hurts.”

“Yes, well, that’s different,” she replies. “You never had some crazy woman trying to break you up, and Darren’s an idiot.”

“He is,” John Paul agrees, and Craig would agree as well if he could bring himself to speak. “So’s Craig, though.”

He can’t take much offense to that, wrong as John Paul is.

“And anyway, it’s too late for us.”

Craig’s chest hurts.

“I’ve moved on.”

His stomach aches.

“There’s been Doug, and – well, the other guy.”

Craig has no idea who either of these blokes are but he wants to punch each of them right in the face. Maybe he has no right to be jealous anymore but that won’t ever stop him.

“The other guy whose name you won’t tell me but you _swear_ was love,” Nancy replies. Craig can hear the raised eyebrow in her voice.

“It was. Maybe still is, I don’t know.” John Paul sighs and Craig tries to make himself stand up, get out of here, get away from this, but he can’t.

“It’s not love,” Nancy says. Craig can hear John Paul start to blurt something in reply, but Nancy continues, “It’s not. It’s you, John Paul, you just love being in love.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel.” He sounds affronted.

“It’s true though, you jump from guy to guy, relationship to relationship, and every time, you think it’s love.”

“And how d’you know it’s not?”

“Because I know you, John Paul, and I know how easily you let yourself fall. You did it with Spike and you did it with Kieron – ”

“That was different,” John Paul cuts in, quietly, in that tone that he seems to reserve just for talk about Kieron, soft and held back and sad, and Craig hates to hear it, hates to hear anything about Kieron, even now.

“I know it was,” Nancy replies, quietly, enough so that Craig is having trouble hearing her before she speaks again and says, “But Doug, this other man. They’re weren’t Kieron, and they weren’t Craig.”

That sends a sick sort of thrill down Craig’s spine. He’s always sort of known, knew it back when they were fighting after Kieron died and after Niall, knew it even before Kieron died – it was the whole reason Craig fought to get John Paul back, after all. Still, he likes hearing it confirmed.

No one else will ever compare to him for John Paul.

And then it occurs to him that maybe there’s something rather twisted about that, how much he gets off on the knowledge that he’s the love of John Paul’s life.

And then it occurs to him that that probably means he should do something about it. Because he’s pretty sure John Paul is the love of his. 

And then the thoughts are too jumbled and messy in his head and he can’t listen to Nancy and John Paul any longer.

-

“I don’t want to have a drink,” Craig tells Nancy as she drags him downstairs to the pub.

“Oh, of course you do! You’re always up for a pint.” She’s got him by the arm, baby Oscar resting comfortably in her free arm, and stomping along like neither the baby nor Craig weighs a thing.

“It’s 9:30 in the morning,” he grumbles, because who’d want a beer that early in the morning? Even Craig’s not that disgusting unless he’s had too many the night before.

“You know what they say,” she replies, far too cheerful for this or any hour. “It’s 5:00 somewhere!” 

He groans at that and tries to resist her tugging on his arm.

“Plus,” she goes on. “It’s Saturday, everyone starts drinking early on a Saturday. I should know, I was a landlord’s wife.”

He ignores he use of the past tense there, though he does want to ask if the reason she’s so chipper is that she’s trying to cover up her own feelings about something, when they turn into the pub and she leaves him to place Oscar in his pram and then go behind the bar and pour two pints.

“You seriously want to drink right now,” he says, more a blunt statement than a question.

“Oh, you know,” she says, raising one of the glasses like a toast. “These things are always easier with alcohol.” She puts the glass back down onto the bar and pushes both pints towards Craig.

“What things?” he asks, and that’s when the pub door opens. It’s far too early in the day for any customers, no matter what Nancy says, so it’s not much of a surprise when Craig turns to find John Paul standing in the doorway. With the pram again. He's got a dark jumper on beneath his unbuttoned coat and a scarf dangling from his neck and he looks really rather beautiful, even though that's rarely a word Craig uses for men. There’s a gurgle of noise from inside of the pram, and Craig has to force himself not to flee, battling down the urge to move his feet.

“John Paul!” Nancy says, more of that over the top cheerfulness. “What a surprise!”

He breaks his shocked gaze from Craig and turns narrows eyes on her.

“…You texted me to come meet you.” He’s angry, but Nancy doesn’t seem to care.

“Did I?” she feigns surprise, puts a hand to her chest and acts as if she’s thinking back on this. “Oh, silly me, don’t know what I was thinking, I was just about to take Oscar for his appointment with the doctor.” 

“On a Saturday, Nancy?” John Paul asks, clearly not believing her. 

“Of course, the office is open on Saturdays, so I must be getting off, see you in a bit!” she tells them breezily, then says down to the baby, “Come along, Oscar.”

And with that she’s breezed right out of the door.

And now they’re alone. For the first time in nearly a year. Craig’s not sure what to do with himself. John Paul’s staring determinedly at the taps behind the bar.

Craig swallows hard.

“If you’re looking for the way out, that isn’t it,” he says, trying to sound light despite the shake in his voice.

John Paul looks at him, frowns.

Craig swallows again and runs a hand over the back of his neck.

“That was the first thing you ever said to me,” he tells John Paul, whose brow just furrows even further for a moment before realization seems to set in and he gives a small laugh, mostly just a burst of exhaled air, but there’s a sudden, tiny smile there that gives Craig the confidence to take a step forward. 

“Also, you look like you’d rather be just about anyplace than here,” he adds, giving a half-smile, that John Paul returns.

“How on earth do you remember that?” John Paul asks him, and Craig can’t help grinning. He’s not even sure at what.

“Guess I’ve just got a good memory,” Craig replies, and John Paul smiles back at him, and it feels easy between them, like it used to be. Maybe this whole thing will be easy, perhaps they’ll be able to just go right back to how they were before everything went wrong, and Craig would kick himself for how sappy he sounds even just to himself.

But the conversation grinds to a quick halt, and Craig’s back to wondering what the hell he’s doing here.

“Um,” he says dumbly. He thumbs over his shoulder at the bar. “Beer? Nancy did so thoughtfully pour us a round.”

John Paul snorts another small laugh as he comes closer, close enough to reach for the pint, close enough that Craig can smell him, a familiar scent that makes him desperate with how much he’s missed it. 

“Yes, _so_ thoughtful of her,” John Paul says. “To ply us with alcohol before we have the world’s most awkward conversation.”

Craig sort of wants to cry with relief at that. Not that he wants this to be awkward, but John Paul’s not angry, he’s not shouting, and Craig’s not tempted to either, and they’re actually joking a bit, and… and this could be okay. It could.

They sip noisily, filling up the silence, and Craig swallows with a long “ahhhhh” that makes John Paul chuckle, when there’s a noise from the pram and John Paul goes back to check inside. Craig’s heart is beating way too fast again, but it’s not that panicky feeling, it’s… something he can’t place. Nervous and shaky and excited and nervous again.

“So,” he says, hesitant, looking at the pram and rubbing one sweaty palm against his jeans. “That’s him, then.”

“That’s him,” John Paul replies tightly without looking up. Craig doesn’t say anything in reply, not sure what he wants to say, and John Paul does look up after a moment. He bites his lip and looks nervously at Craig, and then ventures, “Would you like to meet him?”

Craig breathes out something that feels like relief and he nods.

John Paul reaches down carefully and slowly extracts the boy. Craig can’t help holding his breath. He knows this is going to be a monumental moment, one he’ll have to remember, because he’s determined, in this moment, that he’s going to get them back, the both of them.

As babies go, this one’s a bit average looking – he’s cute enough, nice head of blonde hair, bright eyes that look up at Craig when John Paul steps forward with him. There’s no instant connection, Craig doesn’t immediately fall in love, and it doesn’t subdue any of his fears about fatherhood or parenting to finally meet the baby face-to-face as he’d hoped and wondered it might.

But John Paul holding the little boy, that’s a sight. He's got him in both arms, one hand holding him up under his bum and the other wrapped across the boy's tony stomach. He looks good, confident, like a dad, and it’s not different exactly, how he looks now compared to a year ago, but there’s something more there, something added. He looks happy, holding his son.

“Craig Dean, meet Matthew Jesus MeQueen,” John Paul says quietly.

Craig reaches out, a little shy, and brushes just the tips of his fingers against Matthew’s hand.

Though – wait.

“Matthew Jesus?” he asks, kind of wanting to laugh. John Paul shrugs and Craig grins at him.

“Chloe left him in our manger on Christmas last year. Carmel thought it was appropriate.”

“You let _Carmel_ name him?” he says with raised eyebrows.

“Only his middle name!” John Paul smiles, and begins bouncing Matthew lightly. Craig wonders if he’s aware he’s doing it. “Didn’t – didn’t you know what his name was? Didn’t your mum or Chloe ever tell you?”

“His first name, but I, um,” he starts and thinks about lying for a moment. “I wouldn’t let them tell me any more. I didn’t really want to know anything about him.”

John Paul nods, looking down at the baby in his arms. Maybe he understands, and Craig won’t apologize for how he’s felt about this, but he doesn’t want to hurt John Paul anymore.

“Matthew, though, that’s familiar,” Craig goes on as he thinks about touching Matthew’s hand again. “Is that named for someone?”

John Paul swallows hard at that and looks down at the baby. “Yeah, it’s – it was what my mum called Niall, before she gave him up.”

Craig is stricken at that. “Why would you want to name your son after the man who killed your fiancé?” 

“Niall was the name of the man who killed my fiancé,” John Paul replies quickly, like he’s thought about this and explained it all before. “Matthew was the name of the brother I never got to meet.”

It’s maybe not the best way of thinking about it, but it’s probably easier not to think about how his brother murdered two people John Paul had loved.

So Craig nods and then tells John Paul, “Looks like you’ve been doing a good job with him.”

John Paul shrugs awkwardly with the baby in his arms and says, “I’ve had a lot of help. And I guess when you get down to it, a lot of it is practice. You get used to things quickly, the routine. ‘Course, the routine is usually interrupted by screaming and crying and teething and all sorts of nasty stuff you probably don’t want to hear about.” He gives Craig a tight smile that Craig returns.

“He looks big.”

“Yeah. People always say they grow up fast, but it really feels like it. He’ll practically be driving soon.”

Craig laughs at that, glad for the moment to have an easier topic of conversation.

“And who’s gonna teach him, you? Blind leading the blind, that’ll be.”

“Hey,” John Paul says, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I am not that bad a driver.”

Craig snorts derisively. “Do you even remember the trip to Wexford?”

John Paul rolls his eyes and shakes his head, replies, “That bus came out of nowhere and you know it.”

They share a small laugh, and feels nice. But he wants more. He reaches out to touch Matthew’s hand again, brushes one finger over the five Matthew’s got balled up. He watches Matthew yawn and then waggle his fist at Craig’s hand, and he wonders, even now, if he can do this.

“I want to try,” he says out loud, softly, only half-meaning to.

“You what?” John Paul asks, confused.

“I, um.” Craig straightens up and looks up from the baby to John Paul. He clears his throat and says more firmly, “I want to try.”

“Try… what, exactly?” John Paul asks, hesitant and like he knows what Craig’s talking about, but he’s asking anyway.

Craig licks his lips quickly, suddenly dry and feeling cracked, and puts his hands on his hips. “Us. Again. I want to try. And I think you do too.”

John Paul bursts out a laugh, a sardonic, cynical sort of laugh. “Right, Craig.”

“I _know_ you do too,” Craig insists as John Paul turns away.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, and turns back to Craig. “And how would you know that?”

“Because I know that just like there’ll never be anyone else for me than you, I know there’ll never be anyone else for you than me.”

He grabs for his beer to take a long sip, drinking in the morning be damned, and wipes his mouth on his arm after.

“So sure of that, are you?” John Paul asks, raising disbelieving eyebrows. “Still so full of yourself.”

“Yes, I am full of myself,” Craig says firmly. “And yes, I am sure.”

“Craig,” John Paul sighs, but Craig won’t be deterred. 

It all feels so familiar, but it’s not the same as five years ago. There’s no Kieron and no ghost of an affair and the ruin it left in its wake. They’re older now, they’ve been through things together and they’ve hated each other and Craig gets it now, he understands the enormity of the two of them and not just that they need to work at it, but _why_ they do.

“Because there’s no one else,” he says again. “No one who will make me happy and angry and make me laugh and take the piss out of me like you. I’ve spent the last year trying to convince myself that it’s not true, but it’s – you’re all there is for me, John Paul. I love you.”

He’d like to think that he’s not prone to big, flowery declarations, but the truth is that he is. It’s all part of who they are, it seems, one of them always making a speech for the other.

“Craig,” John Paul says again, and his eyes close as Craig says again, “I love you.” He looks pained, and Matthew gives a small squawk, like he can feel it too.

“Are you drunk?” John Paul asks, opening his eyes so he can glare hard at Craig.

“Please. I’ve had about three sips of beer.” Craig smiles as he says it, but he feels tight and anxious, sure as he is that this is right, and John Paul has to see it sooner or later.

“Then why are you doing this?” John Paul asks, desperate, and he places Matthew back in the pram so he can put his hands on his hips and pace around the room.

“I told you,” Craig replies, trying to stay calm. “It took me a whole year – maybe it even took me five, six years. But I know now, it’ll always come back to me and you.”

“And you couldn’t have realized this a year ago,” John Paul says, waving a hand angrily through the air.

“I didn’t get it then,” Craig tells him. “ _You_ didn’t get it either. You walked away too.”

“Because you _ran_ away, Craig,” John Paul says, near shouting. “You always run, you get scared and you run away.”

“And you push, you always push too hard,” Craig fights back, not angry, but – but something. Intense. His chest is burning, not that awful ache he’s had all year but something new, something that feels actually sort of good and vital. “You push and I run and I don’t want to do that anymore.”

“I think you’ve said that before.”

“Maybe I have, and I’ve failed, I’ve run away, I know that.” Craig takes a breath and shakes his head. “All I can do now is try. We have to _try_.”

“I think we’ve both said that too.”

“And?” Craig wonders, fleetingly, as his voice raises, why none of the rest of the family has come in to interrupt them, if maybe Nancy told them about her machinations.

“We got five years,” he goes on, the words tumbling out of him, unsure of where they’re going. “It’s not nothing, it was worth it then. It could be worth it again. It will be,” he adds, because he’s certain.

John Paul is quiet for a moment, staring at Craig and then tearing his eyes away to look down at Matthew.

“Whether it lasts minutes or months,” he says quietly, so soft that Craig almost misses it, though he has no idea what John Paul means by that. John Paul must sense his confusion – or knows he’s said something confusing, because he does that sometimes – and he looks up at Craig and tells him, “My mum said that once. That it’s worth it. Happiness, whether it lasts minutes or months.”

Craig is unsure quite how to respond. He feels another echo of a conversation they’ve had before.

“Smart woman, your mum.”

“Yeah,” John Paul replies, quiet, staring down at Matthew again. He sighs, then, and looks back up, shrugging. “Is this how it’s always going to be, then? What our lives will be like? Us hurting each other, pushing each other away, running away?” 

“I don’t know,” Craig replies honestly. “But we always seem to come back to each other. As long as we keep doing that… as long as we don’t let each other go completely…”

“Haven’t we already done that?” John Paul asks, a bit sad. “We tore each other apart last year. I don’t think I could go through that all again. And you made it pretty clear that you didn’t want any of the things I wanted, that you weren’t ready for the things I wanted.”

“Did you really want him back then?” Craig nods towards the pram, and he knows it’s a rather brutal question, but he knows John Paul will answer him honestly. They’ve gone too far through it all to lie to each other now.

John Paul sighs and sinks down onto a barstool near enough to Craig that Craig can watch his eyes and see his fingers flex and trace the lines of muscle around his shoulders. It’s good to be this close again.

“In some ways, yeah,” John Paul says, still staring at Matthew. He reaches into the pram, probably to take Matthew’s hand or brush his fingers over Matthew’s head, or something like that. “I’ve always known I wanted to have a family of my own, and for a while I was certain I wanted to have one with you. But I think I knew even back then that I was rushing things.

He looks up at Craig and asks, “Do I always push too hard?”

Craig shakes his head, unsure how to answer. He pulls up a stool close to John Paul and sits down as well.

“It’s like…” he begins, thinking about the words as they form in his mind. “You’re always ten steps ahead of me on every part of our relationship. You’re always ready for the next thing while I’m still… catching my breath or something, getting used to the last part.” He takes a breath and grabs for his beer again, throws back a swallow before going on. “You’re ready to march in the gay pride parade while I’m still struggling to figure out how I feel. You’re ready to get married and start a family while I’m still enjoying just being with you without feeling nervous or self-conscious.”

“You weren’t ready,” John Paul says, like he’s just realizing it even though that was pretty much the basis of their breakup last year.

“I don’t really know how to be ready for something like this,” Craig confesses, looking from John Paul to the pram and back again. “I liked my life the way it was, you and me and our flat and good mates and being able to go out whenever we wanted, not being tied down anywhere – or to anyone. It seemed too soon to give that all up.”

John Paul laughs, at what Craig has no idea, and then he replies, “I don’t know if I was ready to give it all up either. I’ve made some mistakes with him. And with myself.”

Craig shrugs, says, “Well, he’s still alive, isn’t he? Can’t be making too many mistakes.”

“I covered my boss’s care with Post-Its to get back at him for putting me on suspension,” John Paul replies. Craig bursts out laughing at that.

“It’s not funny!” John Paul laughs along with him. “I nearly lost my job over that.”

“Post-Its?” Craig keeps on laughing. “How on earth did you even find that many Post-Its to cover a whole car? Or better question, how’d you afford to buy them all if you’d been put on suspension? Steal ‘em from the supply closet, did you?”

“Shut it,” John Paul grins, balling up a bar napkin to throw at Craig. He shakes his head and then sighs. “Maybe I’m not as ready to be a real adult as I thought either. But the thing is, I’ve got to be, for him.” He nods at Matthew. 

“I know,” Craig says, and steels himself for what he really wants to say. “I’m not – I’m not proposing marriage or something. I’m not saying I’m ready to jump into being a dad, for us to just get right back together.”

“So what’re you saying then?”

“I’m saying – I’m saying I want to try.” Craig swallows hard, runs a hand through his hair. “Date, maybe. Like normal people.”

“Date,” John Paul repeats, sounding maybe a bit dubious.

“I want to get to know you again, get to know Matthew.” It’s hard for him to say as much, with how hard he tried to run from all of this and push it all out of his mind. “I want us to take our time with it. No matter how much I might want you right now,” he adds without meaning to. 

His fingers are resting on the bar, near enough to John Paul’s that he could reach out and touch if he wanted, and when he looks up he finds John Paul staring down at their neighboring hands as well. It feels easier this time around, somehow, than the last time he begged and pleaded with John Paul for them to start over, when he’d grabbed and shoved and demanded that John Paul admit what Craig knew he really wanted. He can feel that same desperation to touch and to kiss and to stroke his hands over John Paul’s skin and to feel him and hear him say there’ll never be anyone better than Craig, but he’s able to keep it at bay, somehow, to hold it in and be patient for once in his life. He knows they’ll find their way back, whether it’s right now or tomorrow or next week or next year. He can wait. He’s never, ever been patient about anything, but for this he can wait.

“And how d’you see us doing that, just casual dating, with you living in another country, hmm?” John Paul asks him. His one hand is still on the bar, still so close to Craig’s, but his other is waving sarcastically through the air between them. “I’m not moving back there – I mean, I loved it there, I loved Dublin, but this is my home Craig, and I’ve missed it. My mum is gone, my family needs me and I need to be near them. And my job is tough, it’s a misery some days, but. I _want_ it, I want to push through those bad parts and keep with it.”

“I know, I understand all that,” Craig tells him placating. “I wouldn’t ask you to move again.”

“So? How do you propose we do this if I live here and you live out there?”

“I’ll move,” Craig tells him, surprising even himself. This is far from what he’d intended when he got on the ferry back in Dublin a few days ago.

“You what?” John Paul asks, looking panicked. He sounds almost frantic, asks, “What about your job, your friends?”

“They do have jobs out here, you know.”

“But you don’t want to live in Hollyoaks, you’ve said it a million times. You’ve never wanted to live here.” He’s looking for excuses, and Craig laughs a little despite himself.

“They have jobs in Chester, and in Liverpool, and in other places nearby.”

“Craig,” John Paul sighs again, rubbing his forehead.

“Why won’t you let yourself have this?” Craig asks him, trying to cut through the rubbish that John Paul is putting up. “I know you want this, want us back again, just tell me you don’t want it.”

John Paul’s shaking his head and he releases a long, heavy breath. He looks around the room for a moment, like he’s searching for something, and then looks down at Matthew inside the pram.

“You remember that night back when we were in school, Hannah’s birthday party?” John Paul asks, and Craig wants to scratch his head at how out of the blue it is.

He thinks for a moment and then replies, “I remember you having a meltdown over Sarah kissing Rhys.” 

“That was the first time I told you I loved you.” John Paul looks up at him at that. Craig’s heart starts beating faster as he thinks of it. Scary and shameful and exciting, that moment was. 

“Yeah, I remember it.” 

“That was pretty much the scariest moment of my life,” John Paul tells him, and Craig can believe it. A lot of moments around that time were pretty terrifying. John Paul nods to Matthew and continues, “Until him.”

Craig considers this and then asks, “What was the scariest moment since having him then?” 

“Pretty much every moment he’s not in my sight. That’s the thing, Craig, it’s not just about me and you anymore. We have to think about him, about his needs now too. I do, anyway.”

“We can,” Craig insists. And now he does reach out to grab John Paul’s hand. It’s the first time they’ve touched in a very long time. “I meant what I said, that I don’t know how to be ready for this, for him. I still don’t know that I am. I want to be honest.”

He does, he wants to be honest with the both of them. He doesn’t want to be that scared kid, lying to himself and running away whenever things get hard.

“I don’t know that I’m ready, but I want to _try_.”

John Paul is quiet for a long time, and Craig would be a bit worried about that, except that he’s holding Craig’s hand right back now and letting Craig lace their fingers together and looking like he’s considering things.

“There’s no guarantees here,” John Paul says, shaking his head slightly, before looking up at Craig.

Craig can’t stop the grin that breaks across his face. He squeezes John Paul’s hand and then pulls John Paul forward so he can kiss him, and it feels amazing. He runs his tongue over John Paul’s upper lip and presses his free hand against John Paul’s cheek and then his neck and his ear and his hair and fuck, it’s just so good, he’s missed this so much, more than he could ever realize when he’d lost it.

He pulls away, just far enough that he can breathe across John Paul’s parted lips and look him in the eye and smile and say, “When have we ever needed guarantees?”

And John Paul smiles right back at Craig and then pulls him in for another kiss.

So they’ll try, and he’ll try to be there for Matthew, and maybe he’ll end up being Matthew’s dad after all, or maybe he’ll just be the man that Matthew’s dad loves, but either way, they'll do their best for him. 

And there’s no guarantees, they both know that. And they’ll try not to hurt each other, though they probably will, but the one thing he does know is that they’ll always come back to each other. 

**-end-**


End file.
